The first Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network (CSLN) meeting of the year carried a sense of new energy with a host of familiar names and faces among the 24 who gathered at Windsor Park Evangelical Lutheran Church.​​Our host, Alvyn Walker, has been deeply involved and active in CSLN for years, just as Windsor Park Church is deeply involved in the life of the South Shore community it calls home. To start the meeting, Alvyn gave a tour of the church, explaining both the challenges and opportunities of maintaining such a community anchor.

"There is not a corner of our planet, not a system, not an individual that does not need ICA methods... We are standing at a tipping point and need to make a decision for ourselves about how to help our planet, our communities, our fellow humans. We need to come together, stand in our wisdom and contribute to a better way. The ICA methods are the engine that helps us do just that."

“The One Earth audience experience often flows like this: watch the film, absorb and digest, discuss and identify an environmental action you can take”, reads a piece titled Focus on Facilitators in this year’s Festival Guide. “We want audience members to leave with something they didn’t have when they arrived, be it fresh information, a deeper understanding, a new connection, or a pledge that will set them on a course of action for the planet.”

A resilient Chicago requires its residents to have clear lines of communication and engagement with its local government.

That was the feedback shared by the Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network (CSLN) ​policy team with a team of representatives from the City of Chicago Mayor’s Office across a series of roundtable meetings in 2017 and 2018. During those roundtables, the Chief Sustainability Officer shared an early working version of a resilience plan for the City of Chicago. Sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative, the new plan sought to prepare Chicago for shocks and stresses that threaten both residents and the city at large.

​The cultural landscape of Chicago is often described by its 77 community areas and 231 neighborhoods. The political landscape, however, is defined by its 50 wards, each represented by an elected alderperson who serves on the Chicago City Council, the City’s legislative body.

​ICA Program Coordinator Samantha Sainsbury has joined the ICA International Board as Treasurer, taking over for Seva Gandhi, who has served on the ICAI board since 2013. ICA International (ICAI) is a “global community of non-profit organizations advancing human development worldwide” that works to coordinate efforts and support peer to peer programming among more than 30 member organizations. While these organizations work independently on local issues, they share common values and participatory processes for human development at the individual, community, and organizational levels. Participation in the ICAI Board allows the ICA community to share and learn from innovations to these shared methods by colleagues around the world.

While ICA programs are often the frontline for the innovation of our methods, we believe that a multiplicity of perspectives and approaches is necessary to creating sustainable change. When we are not organizing educational series in Uptown, sustainability leaders around Chicago, and facilitation trainers across the United States, our team works to cultivate connections and build the capacity of individuals, organizations, and communities through direct facilitation, consultation, and training. We’ve started off strong in 2019, jumping into three ways of facilitating change across three days in late January:

Even in the dead of winter, the warm and vibrant New Orleans was a breath of fresh air. Among the oldest cities in the country, New Orleans has a rich history of diverse cultural influences that infuse it with a particular energy—not unlike the rich and diverse group of facilitators that assembled there for this year’s ToP Network Annual Gathering.

Fourteen people sat calmly in a row, shoulder to shoulder, holding between them over 700 years of experience learning and leading in community development projects around the world. In the air between the fourteen and those who came to hear them speak hung the promise of fourteen stories. Among these stories was a spark of the collected wisdom that would eventually become the Institute of Cultural Affairs and its Technology of Participation (ToP) methods.